[摘 要] 近年来，随着我国改革开放的发展和我国与国际间的经济、科技、文化交流日益频繁，人们越来越重视外国文化问题
同时，我们也逐渐认识到了了解外国文化在对外交往中的重要性
在教育领域中，外语教学也渐渐重视对学生交际能力的培养
然而，对许多老师而言，文化教学还是一个较新的概念，从跨文化角度对英语教学进行研究探讨在目前还是个新领域
我们必须认识到交际能力的培养是外语教学的主要目标，培养学生跨文化交际的技能是中学外语教学要达到的一个目标
本文的第一段介绍了文化及特征，也提到跨文化交际和其重要性，指出跨文化知识的学习在外语学习中的重要性
本文在第二段主要讨论了跨文化教学的现状，突出提到了现存的几个问题
本文的第三章着重探讨在外语教学中如何培养学生的跨文化交际能力
主要包括跨文化交际教学的原则和方法
[关键词] 跨文化交际；文化教学；英语教学 [Abstract] Since last century, because of reforming and opening policy, many people, especially young people go abroad to get a better job or get further education and so on. Besides, many foreigners are curious about our country. Consequently, people come to realize that if we known little about cross-cultural communication, there will be many conflicts. Some experts suggest that today’s English teaching should emphasize intercultural communication. Learners ought to know not only grammar or words, but should learn cultural knowledge. If not, they will meet many difficulties while they communicate with foreigners. Therefore, it is important to introduce this kind of knowledge while teaching. In this thesis, the first part talks about some basic concepts, and the second part, talk about the ways of culture teaching, including some methods and principles. The last part mainly talk about the problems of culture teaching and try to give some suggestions about improving culture teaching. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the importance of culture teaching during foreign language teaching. Culture teaching is necessary for all of us, it can make it possible for learners to prevent miscommunication from occurring in intercultural communications. [Key Words] Cross-cultural communication; Cultural teaching; English teaching 1. Introductio Because of the development of the transportation, communication and economy, the world seems to be getting smaller，people with different cultures keep closer contact. It’s an urgent task for English teachers to master how to make teaching of English meet the needs of social and economic development. The concept of foreign language teaching in Chinese school should be changed from stressing the vocabulary and grammar to cultivating the students’ communicative competence. So, cultural teaching in foreign language teaching becomes an important part. But culture teaching is a very complex procedure. Li Guoliang argues, “The ignorance of communicative culture will affect the quality of foreign language teaching and the students’ ability to use the language as well. ”[1] 2. Something about Cross-culture 2.1 On culture Culture is defined as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs values, attitudes, meanings, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture also refers to history, geography, local conditions and customs, tradition customs, the way of life, literature and art, code of conduct and value outlook. These are five characteristics of culture that will enable us to see how these characteristics influence communication First, culture is not innate but learned. From infancy on, members of a culture learn their patterns of behavior and ways of thinking until they have become internalized. Second, culture is transmissible. It always transmitted from one generation to anther. Third, culture is dynamic. They can produce change through the mechanisms of invention and diffusion Fourth, culture is selective. Every culture represents a limited choice of behavior patterns from the infinite patterns of human experience Fifth, culture is ethnocentric. Ethnoentrism might well be the characteristic that most directly related to cross-culture. [2] .2.2 On cross-culture and the importance of learning cross-cultural knowledge Those characteristics are the common features of most countries’ culture. We know that different country has different culture, and has its own character. As the development of the society, technology, economy, and trade, cross-communication is necessary for every country. Since the culture of different country is individual, if we pay no attention to each other’s culture, there will be many conflicts, even some trifling matters. Many failures exist during communication. For example, eye contact. Eye contact is an important body language. In conversation with people who know each other, the customs of English-speaking countries demand that there should be eye contact. Which applies to both the speaker and the listener. For either one not to look at the other people could imply a number of things, among which are fear, contempt, uneasiness, guilt, and indifference. However, in China, Japan, and Korea, people are expected to avoid prolonged eye contact. In particular, when a child converses with his or her parents or grandparents, he or she is not allowed to stare at them too much. Thus if an American is always gazing at a Chinese in the conversation, the Chinese may consider the American is aggressive，threatening and disrespectful whereas the Chinese is considered suspicious and dishonest if the Chinese always avoids eye contact. Besides, the American may think the Chinese has no interest to talk with him. Another example is greetings. Thanks to cultural value differences, greeting behaviors involve different subjects. American people tend to talk about weather， life，work, and so on after greeting one another, to manage to find out common subjects. However, such a greeting behavior doesn’t go for every culture. In Chinese culture, for example, people usually begin a conversation by either “Have you eaten?” or “Where are you going”. And these greetings are very common and accepted in China, but if Americans are greeted with such questions, communication failure will take place. If asked the former question, Americans will misunderstand that it could indicate an invitation to a meal. As far as the latter question is concerned, Americans will consider that it interfere their privacy. The natural reaction of Americans to this greeting would most likely be “It’s none of your business”. This greeting, for most English-speaking people, is considered as a taboo. Now, let’s come to the definition of cross-cultural communication. Cross-cultural communication means communication between people whose culture perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event. [3] If a person socialized into one culture is living in or visiting another culture, obedience to the norms of host culture probably is effortful and transgression may be reflexive. The violation of any norm brings some form of sanction on the person committing the violation. The sanctions vary from a disapproving glance to the loss of life. Therefore, cross-cultural knowledge is important when we communicate with foreigners. We should realize that when we teach foreign language, teaching cross- culture is indispensable. 2.3 The relationship between language teaching and culture teaching We know that traditional English teaching mostly emphasize vocabulary, grammar, phonetics and so on. Its aim is to develop students’ ability of listening, writing, speaking, or teach them to make correct sentences. In fact, languages’ function is not so .We learn language in order to meet the need of practice，to communicate with foreigners effectively. In addition, the English Curriculum Standard also highlights the cross-cultural teaching, as it play an important role in effective international communication. Therefore, language teaching and culture teaching are inseparable. Now I would like to try to talk something about the relationship between language teaching and culture teaching. Language teaching and culture teaching are inseparable, so, we cannot teach language without teaching culture. As a matter of fact, they are inter-related. In foreign language classes, if the language does not reflect the foreign culture, or the language is taught without relating to its culture, we may consider that he/she learning another language but represent his own culture. On the other hand, if we teach other countries culture but don’t teach its language is similarly unwise. Language teaching and cultural teaching are not conflict to each other in classes. We must believe that either native language or foreign language can play a role in the classes. Teachers usually use native language to interpret the foreign culture to the learners. Besides, if we used the comparison ways to interpret foreign culture, learners will get a well master. In a word, foreign language teaching and foreign cultural teaching support and depend on each other, and they make up of two basic inter-relative elements in classes. But, in order to cultivate the learners’ language awareness, it is necessary to put great emphasis on the language teaching, such as pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. At the same time, we should develop the learners’ culture awareness by paying much attention to culture teaching. Once learners have the culture awareness, they will understand that culture is different from one another and they will know what should do in different specific situation. For these reasons, language study requires us not only understand the language, but also gain the ability to communicate in any cultural communicative situations. In our country, most schools take English as the target foreign in school should try to make every students have the communication ability when they are in backgrounds different from our own. [4] 3. Problems of culture teaching nowadays 3.1 The present situation of culture instruction Among the teachers, 75% develop cultural awareness and cultural competence by means of adding background knowledge in English lessons, while only 33% of the of the students approve this practice. This shows that most teachers prefer the transmission knowledge of cultural when dealing with the teaching of culture. And they control what contents to be added and when to be added, whereas, learners become the passive recipients of the knowledge. But the statistics also show that this practice isn’t popular with the students. Another 33%of them think the way of teaching culture is to engage in classroom activities, which they will gain culture experience. They are expected to learn cultural knowledge by doing from the perspective of pragmatics. And in the process of carrying out various kinds of activities, they learn how to behave in a specific situation. In this way the focus of classroom practice shifts from the teacher to the students. The students become the center and active participants. However, there is a lower rate (20%) of the teachers who hold this belief.[5] Nowadays, there are some flaws about ways of culture teaching. As it is known to us, some pupils’ communicative competence is far behind their linguistic competence. The reason is that teachers put great emphasis on the teaching of English phonetics, vocabulary and grammar and make English learning purely training of languages skills, but take little notice on culture backgrounds. They overlook the culture teaching. Even though some teachers recognize the importance of teaching culture, the common way they deal with culture teaching is to add some cultural background knowledge or reference to its relative dialogues or texts in order to make the classes interesting and expand the students’ vision of the culture. For example, when teacher deal with a certain passage, they will give some information about the author, the works or its main characters and his/her lifetime, introducing some of his or her other famous works, or talking about the general idea or the theme of the passage, especially when it was an adaptation or simplification of a novel. Sometimes those kinds of knowledge are transmitted in Chinese either by the teacher or the students. Besides, in the process of learning and practicing, learners have just cognitively known about the differences and tried to memorize and reproduce similar dialogues. They seldom asked to find the reasons for these differences and discuss the similarities between the two cultures. 3.2 Problems with teacher As we have mentioned above, there are many problems during the process of cross-cultural leaning and teaching. Teacher should pay enough attention to them. But there are some problems about teachers themselves. 3.2.1 Objective problems (ⅰ) Traditional concepts China is a country with thousands of year civilization. It has a certain concept of education. For examples, the teachers’ responsibility is to pass on knowledge, to explain texts and to give answers to controversial questions. The right way of learning is to review. Recitation is one of the most correct ways of reviewing. Learning means the accumulation of knowledge. These concepts of education still have a strong influence on the modern styles of teaching and learning language, including English. In fact, we must learn how to use the language in its social context, for every nation has its own unique culture patter and a language is a carrier of a culture. On this problem, teachers ought to change the view about teaching. The reason we have mentioned above, in present day, it is not enough to have just knowledge of the language learned. We must learn how to use the language in its social context. In a word, teachers should realize the importance of culture teaching and practice. (ⅱ)Time limitation Another reason for teachers’ affecting their concentration on culture teaching lies in the time limitation. Most of the class time has been spent in learning vocabulary, structures and consolidation in order to memorize those linguistic elements and reproduce them, and many English teachers have too many classes, examinations for students make English teachers very busy and tired. These give teachers little time and opportunity to learn and conduct research, though they knew that teaching research could help a lot to their English teaching. Teachers are not sure about how to master new teaching approaches, or how to cultivate students’ communicative competence. (ⅲ)Financial problem Besides, some English teachers are unable to devote themselves to teaching because of financial problem, they are even eager to change their profession. 3.2.2 Subjective problems (ⅰ) Limited experience Teachers in China are usually considered to have limited experience with the target culture, and in fact few teachers can offer some experience in foreign language classes. Most of them are not qualified to deal with culture effectively and confidently because they haven’t enough necessary knowledge. On the one hand, most of English teacher are trained in the Chinese environment. On the other hand, they seldom read books on language teaching theory. Therefore, it is not surprising that they are not capable of dealing with the matter effectively. (ⅱ) Over-confident On the other hand, there is a prevalent phenomenon in China that a great number of English teachers tend to be over-confident about their competence and performance, arguing that they already have enough knowledge to teach English. These kinds of makes them neglect their development. For these teachers, it is important to change their attitude. To solve this problem teachers should realize that his/her own development is the process of lifelong in the teaching profession; it involves many activities, so that to achieve personal and professional growth for teachers. Teachers’ development must be a vital component in teacher education. In order to improve teaching and become a qualified English teacher, he/she should master relevant disciplines such as Linguistics, Psycholinguistics, Social linguistics, Psychology, pedagogy, second language and language teaching. In some countries, including the Netherlands and the, studying and working and try to gain abroad the high level of language proficiency among foreign language teachers. These problems indicate that the English teachers’ foreign language culture and quality cannot nearly meet the requirements of modern English teaching. We really have a very long way to go. 4. Principles and ways of culture teaching 4.1 Principles for culture teaching Culture is important for learners, and cultural teaching and cross-cultural communication are inseperatable. Teaching culture will help us have an effective cross-cultural communication, on the other hand, effective cross-cultural communication can offer us a good cultural knowledge, so we must pay enough attention to it. First of all, let’s talk some principles about it. Maybe they can help us get a effective learning or teaching. (ⅰ) Principle 1 Culture acquisition should not be restricted to the learning of formal or ‘high’ culture, but it should mainly include the learning of everyday or ‘popular’ culture, which is more connected to our social environments. In dealing with these aspects the instructor should not be restricted to just presenting factors. Culture learning should provide learners with chances to research the other cultures by themselves, so that they will obtain tools which will be useful in coming across a new culture, so that the learning of some knowledge will not ended in stereotypical perspective in learners. (ⅱ) Principle 2 Culture acquisition should be highly concerned with the aspects of verbal and nonverbal communication such as common words and phrases, gestures and behaviors. In dealing with these aspects of culture, the instruction should not be restricted to just presenting the norm, but should provide learners with chance to research the other cultures by themselves. The instruction should also provide learners with chance to know the backgrounds or social rules which underline the words, phrases, gestures, and behaviors, so that the learning of them will give the learners with some knowledge, perspectives and skills which enable them to cope with a new situation. (ⅲ) Principle 3 Culture teaching should include the learning or activities which enable students to change their own stereotypes, and also enable them to engage in an actual intercultural communication in terms of a larger identify which she or he and the other person share, so that the communication will be more interpersonal. (ⅳ) Principle 4 Culture acquisition should not be limited to the treatment of national level culture, so that learner will acquire perspective diversity towards others. (ⅴ) Principle 5 Culture learning should not be equated with the learning of the culture of English speaking countries and peoples, nor the adaptation of it. It should deal with varieties of countries and peoples, so that learners will appreciate the value of culture diversity. (ⅵ) Principle 6 Culture learning should place high priority on the learning of the culture of learners’ own country and people Place a correct attitude to the native culture and target culture. We should learn culture. But this does not mean to change our native culture. (vii) Principle 7 Make it interesting. Of course, the culture is interesting to teachers, so they may presume that it will be interesting for their students. (viii) Principle 8 Don’t try to cover everything. Culture is enormous. It consists of all the institutions, all the behaviors, in fact all the man-made aspects of a very large group of non-homogeneous people. All what we can do is provide some pathways to enter into learning more about the culture.
